PTSD, PTSD, Depression and Cannabis Therapy

(PORTLAND, OR) - The marvelous news that Oregon's legislature finally passed a bill which will allow PTSD victims - whether military or civilian, to use legalized marijuana, is truly a blessing to possibly as many as one million Oregonians. Cannabis/marijuana has been used by Oregonians as medicine for about 100 years or more. For starters, it was used as canvas on the covered wagons, and even before that, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin had it in their gardens and used it medically. Thousands of other Americans used it as folk medicine until 1937 when it was made illegal by Congress who didn't know any better.

We also have a bunch of quack doctors who seem to think that PTSD is more like a sliver in the finger, but it will go away if they take morphine like drugs, Valium like drugs, antidepressant drugs, or even gabapentin, an epilepsy drug.

All of these are used by veterans and others to commit suicide to escape the psychological terror of PTSD. According to the news, about 20 suicides occur each day and many are caused by the drugs stated above. Cannabis/marijuana became widely used, mostly by high school and college students simultaneously with the "stressed out" Vietnam War veterans coming home with COMBAT TERRORS. The army and the VA gave them tons of the truly depressant drugs mentioned above with which many committed suicide.

I worked as an active medical marijuana doctor for about five years and ended up with 5,000 plus patients. About 1,000 were PTSD veterans who told me that cannabis/marijuana worked better than any other medicine they had been given.

As far as I know, it also prevented suicides because I have not heard of anyone in our patient base of 160,000 patients who have committed suicide. Many have died, but this was because of cancer or HIV/AIDS. Others who came in had extreme problems with alcoholism and tobacco addition. They came in too late for real help.

For the others with about 50 disparate disease processes, cannabis/marijuana works as well or better than the standard drugs and the 160,000 current marijuana users will tell you so.

The main marijuana clinic, which I started, and still operate with other doctors, sees 200 or more patients per week and currently has about 100,000 total Oregon patients including medical patients and their caregivers.

They are expecting a 50% increase in patient load now that PTSD is acceptable to the Oregon Marijuana Program.

The worst matter about this is that PTSD is not an easily diagnosed disease. Typically, victims can not talk about the extremely serious aspects without breaking down psychologically.

The VA doctors, mostly will not write PTSD in the patient's charts. They will write PERSONALITY DISORDER but they will prescribe by the ton, the deadly drugs noted above, which do not help and cause worse problems.

NOW WE HAVE TO EDUCATE THE VA AND THE VA DOCTORS OF THE BENEFITS OF CANNABIS/MARIJUANA FOR POST (DRAMATIC) STRESS DISORDER!

More information on the history of Dr. Leveque can be found in his book, General Patton's Dogface Soldier of WWII about his own experiences "from a foxhole".
Order the book by mail by following this link: Dogface Soldier

Watch for more streaming video question and answer segments about medical marijuana with Bonnie King and Dr. Phil Leveque.

Click on this link for other articles and video segments about PTSD and medical marijuana on Salem-News.com:
Dr. Leveque INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES